Setting up the spare bed roll next to the fire I looked around, the dungeon wasn’t what I was expecting. A small clearing surrounded a cave that was almost a straight fall down. Apparently once you put any body part over the entrance you would get a prompt and some light information about the challenge it prepared for you. Then you could start the instance or leave.
We were set up right next to it, with a small tarp covering a bedroll laid out next to a smouldering fire. Mostly just for my comfort and in case we suddenly have someone in need of healing, though so far all of the guards had done their runs and only needed small patch heals for some scrapes.
About an hour ago the first of the hunters went in, and from what Sven said as most of these hunters were various crafters with a hunting general skill set added on they should get either a choice between an instance focused on their hunting skills or their crafting class, but if they were lucky they might get offered one that combines both. This would give much better rewards but was also why I was needed, it could be highly risky and there was a real chance of someone coming out of the dungeon already dying.
So far the guards had all gotten skill upgrades from their runs, and at least so far from what they had advised it seemed fairly endurance related with their perception of the instance taking days although thanks to the dungeons time compression it only took an hour for us.
“Hey Sula, how does the time compression work anyway? Like I know I don’t know much about dungeons and all of this combatant stuff being fairly fresh, but surely time compression would be really useful for growing food or something”
“Honestly no idea, some mages in one of the core cities might know, or maybe the drakes have an idea, but it's well beyond most of us. Plenty have tried though. Anyway, are you ready? If Sven and Boris come out without any issues its your go next”
“Yeah I have my stuff ready, got some provisions in my hip bag, along with some bandages and my water skill is filled. Otherwise I don’t really do weapons and my armour should hopefully hold up. Honestly I am hoping for something healing focused, as much as I want to get stronger I could do with some improvements to my skills as our town healer” As I spoke I went through and verified everything was in my bag as I mentioned it. Seven days of jerky and tardis, little hard bread disks that were full of some cook class trick that let you basically live off them and water, felt excessive but I would rather have too much than not enough when it came to survival supplies.
“Right almost been the hour since Sven went in, get ready just in case” As Jaska spoke I moved over toward the small cave to be ready in case Sven was injured on his way out.
As I settled my bag down and got ready suddenly I could hear heavy laboured breathing and saw Sven stepping out, his right arm coated in blood from the shoulder down and dripping it as he stumbled out. Quickly grabbing his arm I dumped as much mana as I could into my skill and sent flames washing over his body finding injuries and healing them.
“A dislocated shoulder, torn tendons in the same right shoulder, lacerations around the shoulder blade and joint, lacerations down the right arm, lacerations to the right side of the torso along the ribs, four broken ribs, abrasions to both shins removing at least a layer of skin, and a lot of missing blood. How are you even walking right now? I am not sure I have enough mana to fix all of this properly, but he's going to live. Let's just get him laying down, what happened?” As I spoke my flames found the worst of the bleeding and repaired those, prioritising the highest risk injuries first, and as soon as he was somewhat stable I gestured for the guards to grab him and move him to the bed roll.
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“Thanks for that, it got a bit rough toward the end but I managed to complete it. Was a bit of a tough challenge, had to hunt and finish off a series of monsters. But on the upside I got a skill that should help me towards the class upgrade I want next along with some levels so worth a bit of risk I would say” as he spoke I continued slowly healing him further, trying to get as much healed up as possible.
“Right I have been able to fix most of this up, I am going to grab a mana potion and finish off healing you up though, I don’t want to have missed anything and beyond focusing on fatal or everything I don’t have a lot of fine control here” Moving over to one of the guard bags I dug through the potion pockets until I found a small yellow vial that had a faint glow, one of the weaker resource potions but more than I could honestly use in one go, I uncapped it and quickly drank the horrific potion down. Somehow a combination of mildew, sulphur, and oddly something that made me think of a sunrise ruined by a misty rain, while it tasted awful I felt my mana quickly filling rapidly and moved to pour my mana into healing Sven up as he spoke to make use of the excess this was going to generate.
“It wasn’t too bad, it offered me a chance to do an extra challenge layer which I accepted. It wasn’t a bait and switch like some dungeons I have heard of though, it clearly showed me my current reward, which was a tracking skill that would have been uncommon rated, and informed me the next challenge was to hunt five creatures again but that the difficulty would scale to match the improved reward. It then offered to challenge it and informed me the next reward would be to upgrade the skill into a related rare tier skill, but that if I quit early I would have the reward skill downgraded to common. It seemed well worth the risk, even the common version gets me a step towards the next class I am hoping to upgrade to when I tier up” Sitting up he was clearly fully healed, but mentally fatigued still, unfortunately healing was often more taxing on the mind then people realised as going from having a limb coming off to it being in a perfect state is hard on the mind to process.
“Okay, we will get you to write it all down in detail, we are going to have to organise everyone's experiences together particularly if it's offering upgrade challenges if you perform well. Last thing we need is someone biting off far too much and not getting the chance to quit before a fatal mistake. Anyway, tell us the good news, assuming you managed to finish it? The skill was worth it for you in the end” While speaking Sula grabbed the notebook they had been having everyone put their notes and information in, she was experienced at translating incident reports into formal documents so she had the short straw of putting everything together as a reference book as more people explored.
“And you, Styx, that is a fair bit of mana you just took in. I am not upset, those potions suck and we have two hunters who ideally want to take on both herbalism and alchemy as that is their core classes as soon as the town is established so they will be happy I need to buy a replacement that hopefully tastes better. But you need to pour the excess into the mana gem you have on you” As I stared at her wondering how she knew I had a mana gem in my pocket she started to laugh at me “Sweetheart, everyone knows when your mana is full because you pull out one of those damn gems and start working on adding to it. It's almost part of your persona at this point, but it's good as it's going to save you wasting a good extra twenty to forty mana points. Once you're done let me know and we can plan for your entry into the dungeon, no one else is reasonably going to get a run in today from the hunters as they are all still busy with their jobs so we may as well take advantage of this and get your run done immediately.”
Logically I knew that Mircha wanted me to level up quickly, as I was considered one of the original town my growth now wouldn’t count against the town in the systems eyes, but also it means if I get stronger I can heal more, so others can push themselves harder with less risk, and it creates a bit of a positive feedback loop.
Settling down to a relatively comfy spot on the grass near the fire, after making sure Sven had started to settle down and was properly resting on the bedroll, I pulled out my latest mana gem and started putting my excess in. At this rate it would take a good twenty minutes to burn through the excess regen I had going on, then it would be time to see what the dungeon was going to offer me.